UFC women’s strawweight Claudia Gadelha has retired from the sport of mixed martial arts
One-time women’s strawweight title challenger Claudia Gadelha has announced her retirement from the sport of mixed martial arts. The 33-year old Brazilian took to Instagram to announce the same.
Her last fight was in November 2020 at UFC on ESPN: Santos vs Teixeira. She took on Yan Xiaonan and lost via. unanimous decision.
There was more to that fight; Gadelha had suffered a brutal concussion in her fight, and that has played a massive role in her retirement.
In a recent Instagram video, Gadelha confirmed her retirement whilst also attributing her decision to the post-concussion syndrome.
In her video Gadelha said:
“In November of 2020, after the fight. I had a really bad concussion and I had post concussion syndrome. Which is the symptoms of a concussion for a long period of time. So I was suffering with the symptoms for a little while. It was very frustrating because my headaches were like a knife stabbing the back of my head. I was very nauseous, I was like throwing up and feeling very, very bad. I couldn’t even go for a walk, much less train.” [via BJPenn.com]
She continued:
“I found out that without health we are nothing. You know I had to rush to the hospital in the beginning of my concussion, twice. I ended up in the emergency room, twice. You know, so I am here in Las Vegas by myself and my family is in Brazil and this is during COVID so I couldn’t fly to Brazil to go be with my family. Because it was like the beginning of the concussion so I couldn’t fly and my parents couldn’t come here because of COVID. So I had to spend a lot of time by myself and that was very frustrating. With that being said, I started thinking about not fighting anymore.” [via BJPenn.com]
Claudia Gadelha challenged for the women’s strawweight title once
Claudia Gadelha made her UFC debut on the 16th of July, 2014. She beat Tina Lahdemaki on debut and ran into Joanna Jędrzejczyk straight away. A split decision loss to Joanna set the tone for a rematch.
Following a win over Jessica Aguilar, Gadelha fought Joanna for the women’s strawweight championship. However, she was beaten by a unanimous decision.
Gadelha never really came into the title picture after that, but she still beat some big names. Her record reads 18 wins and 5 losses. She was never knocked out or submitted in her career.
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